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Microsoft Applies to Patent RSS in Vista
Cyvros wrote in with a link to Wired's Monkey Bites blog, which is featuring a post on Microsoft applying for a patent on RSS. As the article points out, this isn't as crazy as it seems at first blush. From the wording of the application, post author Scott Gilbertson interprets their move as a patent on RSS only within Vista and IE7. From the article: "The big mystery is what Microsoft is planning to do with the patents if they are awarded them. The sad state of patent affairs in the United States has led to several cases of Microsoft being sued for technologies they did arguably invent simply because some else owned a generic patent on them. Of course we have no way of knowing how Microsoft intends to use these patents if they are awarded them. They could represent a defensive move, but they could be offensive as well -- [self-described RSS inventor Dave] Winer may end up being correct. It would be nice to see Microsoft release some information on what they plan to do with these patents, but for now we'll just have to wait and see whether the US Patent and Trademark Office grants them."
Patent on the wheel can't be long in coming.
Linus should patent both RSS and Atom in Linux before anyone else does.
and nobody has bothered to dispute it because who the hell would want to claim such a convoluted design as their own?
Everyone was so *happy* when they decided to actually play nice and use an established icon for RSS.
// patent crap.
Why would they turn around and piss everyone off?
WHY??
Oh wait... it's MS. Nevermind. Business as usual.
so hey.. does this mean Firefox will have to exclude that feature in upcoming Vista builds?
I can see it now:
#ifndef _MS_VISTA_
Links.AddLiveBookmark();
#endif
Well I'm going to patent the 8.3 naming convention in the FAT filesystem! How do you like THEM apples?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
over patent infringement? Actual cases and not the 'OMG they might sue us' screeching please.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If you want only to defend your right to use something patentable, you just publish in a journal held by a number of libraries. IBM's Invention Disclosure Bulletin is an example of this. They publish everything they think might be patentable, but not worth the time and expense to patent.
I quick read the application through. It is more about a system that aggregates RSS content further to other applications. Think of refactoring your RSS reading application into background daemon and sending the content via D-Bus to all subscribers. Something like that but it is definitely NOT a patent application for RSS itself, the main article is ignorant and written by someone really stupid.
I'd mod the main article as -1: Troll if I could. It's just anti-microsoft FUD.
From my reading it looks like they are going to provide an object model that stands between RSS providers and RSS and non-RSS consumers. MS wants clients to access their proprietary object model in which feed subscriptions are modeled as a hierarchy of folders, and wherein the object model provides access to a shared list of feed subscriptions and they can populate from standard RSS and other sources.
Sounds like the proprietary extension of public standards thingy they've been doing for a while. A good or bad thing depending on if you are a hater or not.
Dave is not amused by the sly implication contained in that description of him:
f AHack
http://www.scripting.com/2006/12/23.html#anatomyO
MS is patenting their implementation of RSS in IE. Not RSS. If you want to come up with a way of interacting with MS SQL server that is novel, you can patent it. If you want to patent a novel way of attaching a wheel to a car, you may. Remember, it doesn't have to be useful, the best way, or practical, it just has to be novel, or an improvement upon an method.
While I love RSS and all, Winer has a history of being a whiner in this matter when it comes to ATOM and RSS. Almost as bad as Reese Sellin was with his ill conducted projected.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I've been really annoyed lately at how bad patents get awarded and then litigated...
In real patent litigation, the main way to claim invalidity is 102(b). This says that if the work was published in a printed publication, or for sale in this country, more than one year prior to the filing date, then the patent is invalid. There are other grounds for invalidity, such as 103 (obviousness), but because of bad case law, obviousness is a very slight extension to 102(b) (hopefully this will be fixed with KSR v Teleflex, currently before the US Supreme Court). This one-year bar essentially means that as long as I'm within one year of being the first to do it, and I'm the first to file for a patent for it, then I'll win as long as no previous inventors filed for a patent. (We're a first-to-invent system with some caveats; if the first inventor doesn't try to patent it, he can lose his patent rights to a later inventor).
In technology, one year is a really long time, so its important that everyone files for patents lest something "obvious" be granted, and your competitor take away all your customers by claiming that your technology infringes their patent. Its way easier to solve this problem before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences than it is before a judge and jury who have no technical knowledge whatsoever (and probably try patent cases once in a blue moon). Sure, if you lose in district court, you can always appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but by the time the appeal is litigated, you may have lost most of your customers.
Microsoft's doing the smart thing by filing for this patent. Hopefully they'll also do the right thing by not abusing it.
I can't say I'm sure why Microsoft patent RSS-in-IE7, but I still hear Admiral Ackbar breathing behind me...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I fail to see any positive outcomes for any party for Microsoft patenting RSS for IE only. It's not like anybody else develops IE or something. The only way to infringe it would be to make a plugin for IE7 to do something it already does by itself.
Could I apply for and get a patent on door-knobs or maybe lightbulbs that only applies to items within my home? I own the home which is the same as owning an OS then patenting software that runs within that OS?
Then I could sue all the manufacturers of door-knobs and lightbulbs that I use in my home.... how could they dispute my claims? They don't have a patent for door-knobs "in my home" do they? I could even manufacture a door-knob and install it in my home as proof of concept.... they'd be infringing on my design.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Hurrah, you read the claims and a good chunk of the description (unlike everyone else). It's a shame you are likely to be ignored or worst marked a troll.
Come on, folks. You knee-jerk, anti-MS folks jumping on this really weaken your own arguments. There are serious issues with MS and reasons to be anti. But, this is a nothing-burger compared to that. But, by focusing on this, you marginalize the real arguments. You make yourselves look like Republicans taking Bill Clinton to task for lying about a blow job.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Except the way that IE handles RSS feeds in brain dead. Correct me if I am wrong, but to see the rss feeds in IE you have to open the RSS feed page, as opposed to the live bookmarks in Firefox or the newsticker in a hundred other rss readers.
The big mystery is what Microsoft is planning to do with the patents if they are awarded them.
Wow. [pause] Wow. I'll take a stab at this one. They'll use it to... mmm... patents, patents... Ah! They'll use them to prohibit some party or parties to manufacture the software which is described in the patents' claims? Can I get a golden star for this one, please? It's long overdue.
It seems to me after reading the patent application that they are trying to patent the API they created for allowing different programs within Vista (IE7, Outlook, etc) all share the same collection of feeds in various formats.
Microsoft doesn't have to sue, they merely have to threaten to sue. In practice, they tend to settle for things like "if you commit to licensing Microsoft Windows and Office, then all your patent worries will go away". Because every large corporation has a significant number of Microsoft zealots inside anyway, such a settlement isn't difficult to achieve. Usually, such settlements are covered by non-disclosures, so you never find out about them.
Make no mistake about it: Microsoft is using their patents offensively, but they are evidently smart about it by keeping it low profile and negotiating carefully.
Microsoft isn't patenting RSS, they are patenting RSS aggregation and conversion, and they are also trying to cover alternative formats like Atom. That doesn't make the patent less outrageous, it makes it more outrageous. Why are we talking about Microsoft? Because it is Microsoft that filed this patent.
Second of all, from my reading anyway, Microsoft is not patenting RSS, but RSS within Vista/IE7. Of course I'm not a patent lawyer, I could be wrong about that.
You couldn't patent "RSS within Vista/IE7" if you tried. This patent looks like it's trying to cover broadly RSS syndication, RSS aggregation, RSS feed conversion, and object-oriented libraries for working with RSS feeds. The fact that it's beating around the bush and not patenting the RSS format itself is simply patent strategy: Microsoft's lawyers are trying to "build a fence" around RSS, leaving the open core open, but patenting everything around it so that you can't use RSS without infringing on their patents.
Make no mistake: if this patent gets granted, most RSS software will be infringing.
The claim is an aggregator, which is capable of reading RSS 0.91, 0.92, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom, and probably a few more formats not mentioned (I suspect a proprietary version as well).
Specifically, it aggregates the RSS feeds into one single common XML format, which is exposed in an object model with the folder hierarchy metaphor from Windows Explorer. Applications can reach subscriptions through the aggregator, without having to subscribe directly to the feed, and without having to parse the feed's format directly.
There is also a publishing aspect of the aggregator which is not clearly described. It hints at cutting out the 'publish' part of publishing a blog, so users may create in whatever application they want to, and publish through this aggregator (as opposed to opening a web browser, going to a bookmark, logging in, typing crap, and clicking OK, which is apparently a burden for some people).
And of course feed management so you can choose what you are subscribed to.
Oh yeah, and the corresponding API. And it will probably be for Office but usable by every MS program under the sun:
There are also aspects of downloading feed data on-demand as opposed to actually subscribing to it. And you can change the name of the feed from "New York Times" to "NYT" [0039].
And a bunch of scheduling mumbo jumbo, so that everyone gets a say in how often the feed is checked. And the sync engine schedules itself via Task Scheduler if needed. And it mentions this cool thing called HTTP, I need to read more about that.
Now for the moment you've all been waiting for: the security vulnerability. If the feed contains an attachment, it gets run automatically and roots your windows box (were that possible I mean). I guess it 'Administrator's your box.
And in true microsoft fahsion, it will store everything you dever downloaded in compound files (.stg)
I got bored at this point, basically some blah about Win32 COM objects and available by scripting languages.
You are right, but I was initially confused, too.
In case 1: A has patented, B has released in the wild. A sues B for tech A. B can't do anything.
What the parent proposes is that B publish the details of tech B. This prevents A from getting a patent on tech B, true, so there is the slight improvement that A can't sue for both tech A and B.
But it has no effect on the patent for tech A.
So getting a patent on tech B is a defensive move.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing--particularly to unthinking troglodytes like the parent. Mod him back to the Stone Age before he can do any further damage to the state of human knowledge.
Microsoft PM Sean Lyndersay posted a response:
Where's the guy who was asking why people hate MS? link. Case in point. Dave Winer post a question on the "personal blog" of MS's Emerging Business Team asking if MS would promise not to sue him if it gets these patents. As you can see here, there's no response. Silence is golden?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Microsoft is probably trying to avoid another Eolas fiasco. Microsoft has already been stung by the US patent insanity, and with their patent tied explicitly to Vista and IE, there's not really much harm they can do with it. And as a web developer whose had to deal with the fallout of the Eolas case, I actually find myself supporting Microsoft when they're trying to avoid it happening again. I certainly don't want to have to find another crappy javascript hack to work around a stupid, obvious patent.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
This is how Microsoft does patents. They don't file for a generic patent that covers everything for every purpose of a technology, but they file patents for this that are specific to the technology that they have produced - be it IE, Windows or .Net. This seems to be a defensive play to protect what they see as their IP, and anyone who may try and implement their technology away from Windows.
.Net - that can be implemented in the CLR and are applicable to the ECMA specs they laid down. This means that if you were to pull some concepts and ideas out of .Net and apply them to Java, you'd be OK, but woe betide you if you want to try and make anything compatible with what Microsoft is doing.
The hoo ha over patents with Mono is a good example, and is something that just hasn't been taken into account by those people at all. Microsoft has patented, or applied for patents, to a lot of concepts, technology and APIs that the patents make clear are specific to
Company A develops a process to do a particular thing, this process isn't that obvious (well it ain't to me) they apply for a patent. People cheer as a patent goes through and uses the US patent system properly (unlike the overbroad and ambigious patent descriptions which are rife in the system.)
Now lets try that again, Microsoft develop a way of dealing with RSS feeds for Vista its new and their patented process. It's very specific, people begin a fud campaign and start talking about the evil empire. I just don't get how this is news, unless people using the system properly is so unusual over the pond.
I'll work off the assumption there has to be some financial and or control related gain to this or they wouldn't do it.
/. I'm obligated to mention the evil ones I've thought of so far.
MS's market dominance will ensure Vista and IE7 will become the majority OS & browser rig over time this patented RSS aggregation / delivery API system will be part of it.
The patent states "the platform can acquire and organize web content, and make such content available for consumption by many different types of applications" so it would be fair to assume that over time more Windows applications will work with the feeds via this mechanism. I'm sure they'll do their utmost to make it nice and easily accessible through development tools, etc.
MS are setting themselves up as a vital link in the RSS supply chain; the toll bridge troll as it were. With sufficient install base and support by Windows applications there are lots of things Microsoft could do. This being
1. Microsoft don't own the RSS format and can't dictate how it's run. After a while of this mechanism being in place a new patented and big media friendly format could be introduced and promoted to the detriment of RSS. To the applications using the mechanism, and thus the end users, all this is transparent. MS then have a format they can control.
2. They could throw lawyers at anyone who produced a similar system for other operating systems.
3. They could add to this mechanism a way to make some feeds chargeable through a standard payment system.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
For the I-never-read-the-source-luke-department members, I add here what I deposited on the original site; hoping to clarify the matter:
;)
"Second of all, from my reading anyway, Microsoft is not patenting RSS, but RSS within Vista/IE7. Of course I'm not a patent lawyer, I could be wrong about that."
I am very unclear what makes the author of the blog think this ? I read the claims - and that is what counts in a patent, only - and can't find anything that points to Vista. The only technical feature the claims talk about is the feature mentioned mainly in claim 10: reading RSS by an application that generically cannot read it. That is meant with the plurality of applications in claim 1.
Therefore what the patent proposes is *not* to patent RSS, but to patent the rocket-science-like concept of getting the RSS as is (that is, again, *not* patenting it), and miraculously translate it ('API') to be used in other applications.
To me, the patent is written very clearly and rather concisely. If you now read the blog again, alas, it doesn't really hit the problem and the consequences right between the eyes.
The question are basically two:
1. For patentability, it must be made sure, that nobody has proposed to use RSS for a plurality of 'drains', applications, that do not natively 'speak' RSS, before the filing date, June 21, 2005.
2. For business reasons, one needs to evaluate the value of a patent that prevents others from using RSS for other applications; like importing it into a media player. Obviously, there is a nice stranglehold that the patent offers to the owner against competitors.
And let me add some more remarks here for Slashdot raeders:
Sure, the whole thing is probably crap. As much crap as the Slashdot title "Microsoft Applies to Patent RSS in Vista". AFAIK, there are browsers (claim 19), media players (claim 20) and e-mail (claim 18) in non-Microsoft products as well
Dave Winer is wrong just as well; there is no single attack on RSS in the patent. Anyone who just reads RSS in an RSS-reader will be able to do so in future. But beware the patent is granted (and I bet the dimwits in USPTO will grant it), and you write and sell an application that extracts RSS feeds into a set of hierachical folders (claim 8), that reside on the machine and are queried by a browser, media player or e-mail client; and you'll be tossed.
Actually, the only thing that I personally find 'clever' in this application (and I am *not* an RSS person), is the setup of these hierarchical folders. Because one can mirror RSS-content locally, any content, within topical folders, and then query these folders for content; like media player for latest on movies (and then offer the movie through your media player); browser for news (and then offer the news feeds contained in the RSS); and so forth.
Hope you didn't want to use anything but IE-7 for RSS under VISTA. Looks to me like Opera, Firefox, and everything else will be legally locked out. Or looked at the other way if you want to enjoy RSS you will have to use IE-7. If MS gets the patent(s) they are not required to license them to anyone for any price --any price whatsoever. That's the minimum. The worst-case scenario is to make it illegal to access RSS with anything but VISTA & IE-7. Of course, such an abomination won't bother the Microsoft-worshipers, will it?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Just an idea: what if you could level the playfield by requiring both sides to have state appointed lawyers with limited assistance from company lawyers upon request from one party?
If such a mechanism did exist, a small company could require this to avoid some of the costs of a legal battle without giving tha larger fish an undue advantage.
If both companies are big enough, say, IBM and Microsoft, they could give up such protection and have their own lawyers fight.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
If things keep going like this they'll end up patenting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!
You're a good guy. You try your best. You also don't understand the patent system.
/.
It is *not* a patent. Yet.
The decription is irrelevant, still you bold a passage from there.
Your 'evil ones' are spot on, though. Nothing to do with being on
"You're a good guy. You try your best. You also don't understand the patent system.
It is *not* a patent. Yet."
I shouldn't feed the trolls but I'm bored! Surely whether it's a patent yet or not is irrelevent. The points I made were based on the possibility that it could become one. Admittedly I used 'the patent' rather than 'the patent application' but given the way USPTO seem to rubber stamp anything these days it may as well be a patent. You admit as much with the 'yet' so it seems to me though you're being pedantic over a minor detail not to mention rather patronising. With that in mind, other than the nod about the points was there any serious point to your reply than to piss on someone's cornflakes?
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
I am sure you read everything; and I am sure you understood everything. Therefore I am sure that you noticed that I had not written anything, would it not have been about your main argument, when you used part of the description to assess legal aspects. One of the items being preached on Slashdot over the years, is to understand the difference between the claims and description in a patent. Legally binding are only the claims.
Plus, your first sentence started off analytically, and you finished by pointing out three 'evil' aspects. Why the feeling of being obliged ? Convinced or obliged ?
I'll work off the assumption there has to be some financial and or control related gain to this or they wouldn't do
How is this for your financial incentive: Not getting sued 5 years from now because some nutjob managed to get a patent granted for some basic RSS functionality. (see Eolas vs Microsoft)
Urm . .forgive my poor understanding (1 module of a multi-dispicplinary degree) of Law, and patent law in particular but
.. of course I forgot. Those nice people at the US Patent Bureau.
1) You can't patent something that is already in the public domain (as Vista is)
2) You can't patent something that is already in the public domain (as RSS is)
So how the heck do they expect to be able to patent an application of two specific items?
Oh
--- This meme is memory intensive
IANAL, but this sounds like they are planning to make an API for "msRSS", that is: to embrace&extend RSS into a patented, proprietary, "common format" for IE/Outlook/WMP/etc... This would of course lock in their "email/web browser/media player applications", which could help in squashing Firefox,Eudora/Thunderbird,VLC and other "pests", not to mention that it could harm the real RSS because everyone's using msRSS.
... implement: an RSS platform that is configured to receive and process RSS data ... to enable different types of applications to access RSS data that has been received and processed by the RSS platform. ... to receive and process RSS data in multiple different formats, ... configured to convert the multiple different formats into a common format. ... a set of APIs ... that enable at least one application to access RSS data that has been processed and stored in a feed store; and wherein said at least one application does not understand an RSS format ...
How's this for a conspiracy theory?
Some key points from the patent, severely stripped:
1.
3. The system of claim 1,
10.
18-20. The system of claim 10, wherein said at least one application comprises an email/web browser/media player application.
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/
From reading the patent it seems to me Magpierrs is prior work.
"with their patent tied explicitly to Vista and IE, there's not really much harm they can do with it"
Like how so, doesn't this mean no one else can impliment RSS functionality in their applications without violating this patent.
'the APIs are implemented as COM dual interfaces which also makes the APIs useable from scripting languages, managed code as well as native Win32 (C++) code'
was Re:On the not-quite-so-paranoid hand...
davecb5620@gmail.com
"MS is patenting their implementation of RSS in IE. Not RSS"
.. Almost as bad as Reese Sellin"
It seems that they are patenting API calls that provide RSS functionality to applications. As such the effect of the patent will be to lock out third party developers from using them. After all how many different ways can this be implimented. Do these API calls currently exist in Vista. Are the specs published.
"While I love RSS
I don't understand how you can love a a content format and what relevency does a gratuitous ad hominem have to do with MS patenting RSS + API + COM.
'In the example about to be described, the APIs are implemented as COM dual interfaces which also makes the APIs useable from scripting languages, managed code as well as native Win32 (C++) code'
was Why the hullabaloo? (Score:2, Insightful)
davecb5620@gmail.com